We demonstrate photon-pair generation in a reverse proton exchanged waveguide fabricated on a periodically poled magnesium doped stoichiometric lithium tantalate substrate. Detected pairs are generated via a cascaded second order nonlinear process where a pump laser at wavelength of 1.55 m is first doubled in frequency by second harmonic generation and subsequently downconverted around the same spectral region. Pairs are detected at a rate of 42/s with a coincidence to accidental ratio of 0.7. This cascaded pair generation process is similar to four-wave-mixing where two pump photons annihilate and create a correlated photon pair.

Copyright (2011) American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters,99,081110 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3628328